"Stepping Up" Habits

An aspect of personal development that can slow people down is the process of taking new self-improvement information (from books, CDs, podcasts) and then applying this new information to their lives. Creating a "return on the time invested" in learning how to be better is not often discussed in personal development. People will sit and listen to speakers or read terrific books and they excitedly recognize that the information they are receiving has the potential to change their lives. But, they don't get any guidance on how to use it to change their lives. The latest best-seller on getting a better life has the potential of providing you with a lot of personal gains, but doesn't give you the tools to realize those gains.

Two months later, nothing has changed. And, that is because receiving great information only gets you so far. You have to know how to incorporate it into your life, too.

Increasing your intelligence is a good thing, but it doesn't have any worth if you can't use it to produce real value in your life. To create value, the information must be applied habitually. Using self improvement techniques every once in a while will not maximize their value. Instead, to realize optimal life gains, you need to use self-improvement techniques as often as poosible. The application must become a habit.

Think back to something that you read or heard that made you say, "I want to do that!". It could be a new business efficiency process, a way to control anger or to get over depression. Just pick one specific thing that really jumps out at you for this first go-around. Review what it was that you want to change or create in your life. Really think it through and visualize yourself applying it. Next, look for opportunities to use it in your life and then use it again, and again, and again.

For me, some techniques can be applied once and once I see how effective they are, I will apply them forever. For example, once I took an hour to figure out how to color code my emails for increased efficiency, I was hooked. Other techniques, however, take me much longer to adopt. Yoga is something that feels fantastic, but since it is not an aerobic workout for me, it took 4 sessions before I loved it. There are things that you may want to just "try it for size", because they are large changes. Twenty-five years ago, when my Mom was thinking about becoming a vegetarian, it was a fairly radical notion. There was not a lot of support or options for them in the world. My Mom decided to make gradual adjustments and then see how she felt along the way. She was very vocal that she could always go back to eating meat if a vegetarian lifestyle had more drawbacks than benefits. She spent about two years adjusting her palate and her diet, always with the idea that if this wasn't working for her, then she could try another form of self-improvement. It was her choice and if the choice wasn't working out, then she could simply make another one. Twenty-five years later, and I can see that she still has this mind set that she is "trying out" being a vegetarian; she just never decided to quit trying it out. Whenever I order a a pizza with prosciutto, she eyes it hungrily. Still, every meal is her choice, but at this point the choice to fix each meal according to a vegetarian diet has become a habit.

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Concentrated repetition of your knowledge will help it to become a constant part of your life. You will notice the gains in your life and feel more and more motivated to continue to apply it. Repeating the behavior over and over again will form it into a habit and eventually, you will not need to think about doing it. It will become your automatic way of handling life. When this one new change becomes automatic, you can expand to incorporating more and more of your knowledge into your actual life. You will have finally leveraged all that information towards improving your life. Your actions will result in a "step up" of your life to more energy, more motivation, more love, and more abundance.

As your life changes, your thoughts will change, too. What seemed difficult, if not impossible, to do, you will now see yourself as capable of. As your habits shift from unproductive to productive, your thoughts will do the same. Don't assume that your belief that forming a new habit is hard, will still be your belief once you get going. For me, a great shift in my thinking was when I realized that I could either think something was easy or difficult. In reality, often the forming of a new habit falls somewhere in between, but why should I start out with the belief that it will be difficult to do? It is so much easier to start with the belief that it could be really easy. And, in fact, once I get into new habits, such as daily exercise, I find that it is indeed enjoyable, energizing, and a great stress relief. These are indicators to me that my habit of exercising is producing real life gains. My habit is an action towards "stepping up" to the next level in my life.

So, get started on implementing new actions in your life. Imagine how your life would be once you are free from the ineffective habits that are holding you back. As Nike says, "Just do it!"

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